Aspects of the present invention relate to system management. Other aspects of the present invention relate to recording hardware malfunction information.
Hardware platform of a computing device may comprise different components that work together in concert to support various functions. For example, a personal computer may comprise a central processing unit (CPU), a memory, a bus, and a hard disk. An operating system (OS) may run on such an integrated hardware platform. Different applications may then run on top of the OS. Malfunction of either a hardware component or a software application may cause the OS to crash.
In the event of a system crash, an underlying computing device such as a personal computer may subsequently need to be rebooted to either determine the cause or to restore the system. Whether the system can be restored may depend on the cause of the problem. For example, if it is a software problem, the system may be able to recover to achieve the system status prior to a crash. If it is due to hardware problem, the system may not be able to recover without replacing the malfunctioning part. Therefore, identifying the cause of a crash may allow a faster restoration. For example, activating which appropriate reboot procedure may be determined based on an identified cause.
Some system platform may include a machine check architecture. Such a machine check mechanism may collect information related to system management and may offer an accurate depiction of the operational status of the system. For example, it may observer errors occurred, for example, within CPU and external bus. However, when a system crashes, such collected information may disappear so that it can not be used in assisting the recovery post modem.
Some system platform may also include different protective modes such as a system management mode in Intel architecture. A system management mode may allow high priority and full access to input and output (I/O) and memory and can be used independently of the OS. Currently, such system management mode is not effectively utilized.